Food Brewing Your Own Beer

I'm the only one who drinks it!

It's awkward as it is just to enjoy beer in the house, being the only one who drinks. I normally only drink (beer or anything else) when I have company over, which doesn't happen often.

My other issue is space. My apartment is pretty small.

I've always wanted to try homebrewing. I'd even go to one of those brew-your-own locations, except maybe it's a bit too hands off for it really to be worth it. The one place here gets you to set up your batch in 10 minutes and they do the rest and call you when it's ready. (Though I really don't know what the entire process is like.)

I'd like to try making mead too.

Maybe one day if I ever have a house, I'll get into this kind of thing. One day....

 

Yay homebrewing!

I help my husband design and brew beer. I've yet to brew my own batch, although I have had significant design input on several of the beers we've recently produced. Usually, I help when he needs an extra pair of hands during the mash and sparge. If he has a helper, I keep him and his helper well-fed through the process. We have a few beers we've made that I really love. I think my favorite has been the clone of Brother Thelonius we did. The plan is to do it again in August so it will have time to age before Christmas. We're off to the brew shop right now to get ingredients for a hoppy red and a redo of an extra pale we brewed earlier this spring. These beers are for a friend's wedding We did a hazelnut brown for @ZombieSquirrel's roommate's b-day that went over very well. Instead of using hazelnut extract, we used Frangelico, which has become my new favorite liqueur. We have a sour rhubarb sitting in secondary right now. For my birthday, we brewed a sessionable Belgian wit that's just going into the keg this weekend to be carbonated. Yummy! Once we get the sour rhubarb out of secondary, I want to brew a Flemish red that is similar to Rodenbach Grand Cru.

We have enough equipment to do two brews at once. A friend stores his equipment here, along with his kegging system, which we get to use. The kegerator sits in a corner of the living room.

Sampling wort makes me wish we had malt flavored drinks/sodas in the United States. It's so sweet and tasty.

I'll share some specific all-grain recipes when I get a chance to get them off of hubby's phone. We use an app for Android called BrewR to help us design our beers.

 

Baraka_Guru, I definitely think you could pull off some small-scale extract brewing in an apartment.

 

I've contemplated trying before, but I already have too many expensive hobbies. I know how I am, I'd end up brewing a massive amount of beer, then feel that I had to drink it all.

 

It's a bit more complicated, as it adds some additional steps. Jon Palmer's book How to Brew is online now, and he has a great breakdown of all-grain brewing: How to Brew - By John Palmer - Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer In my mind, the hardest part is the sparge. You've got to precisely measure how much water you're adding back into the mash tun, and you can't just dump the water in. You kinda stream it down the sides of the mash tun. It can be done solo, but it's a lot easier with a second pair of hands--this is why I often get tagged to help at this step. Once you've got your wort, it's the same as extract brewing--boil, hop additions, etc.

You need a beverage cooler (the kind for water, see here for examples: Northern Brewer - All-Grain Equipment : Northern Brewer) for a mash tun.

Borla, once you have the equipment, it's not that expensive. We got the equipment as a wedding present and have borrowed other pieces we needed. We spent about $30 for our all-grain extra pale today, and the only reason it was $30 is because we're out of our homegrown hops

 

Hops like heat, but I'm not sure they like that much heat. Yes, partial is easier, and gives you some of the control over flavor that all-grain gives you.

Our homebrewing hobby has made us very popular. Since we're kegging these days, we take a keg or a growler to parties with us. Brewing is usually a community affair. I make pizzas and we have a good time while making beer.

 

Brewing some extra pale this morning, and just took some pics during the sparge:

 

We are being forced to take a break as our output at the moment is surpassing our keg space and we might have to bottle. We have 10 gallons of cider fermenting, 5 gallons of a hoppy brown, and 5 gallons of a fresh hop IPA done with delicious Cascade hops we picked ourselves. I think it's getting to be time to brew a beer for the holidays, as I want to brew something that needs a bit of conditioning time, like our clone of Brother Thelonius.

 

With the heat where you are, a week should be plenty of time.

 

Are you using Whirlfloc? Have you tried wrapping the hops up in some cheesecloth? Our brewshop sells these things that look like cheesecloth socks. We use them for the hop additions.